Open AccessAll-optical enhancement of minimum detectable perturbation in intensity-based fiber sensors
Author(s) -
Benoit Vanus,
Curtis L. Baker,
Liang Chen,
Xiaoyi Bao
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.441217
Subject(s) - intensity modulation , optics , sideband , fiber optic sensor , light intensity , intensity (physics) , phase modulation , optical fiber , modulation (music) , optical power , physics , perturbation (astronomy) , materials science , phase noise , acoustics , laser , microwave , quantum mechanics
We present a novel optical signal processing scheme for enhancing the minimum detectable environmental perturbation of intensity-based fiber sensors. The light intensity is first stabilized by inducing a sinusoidal intensity modulation and extracting the first-order sideband generated by self-phase modulation (SPM) in a nonlinear medium. The light with stabilized intensity is then sent through a sensor and the sensor induced power variation is magnified by first inducing a sinusoidal intensity modulation, then undergoing SPM, and finally extracting a higher-order sideband. The advantage of the proposed stabilization-magnification (SM) sensing scheme is experimentally demonstrated by applying a damped vibration on an intensity-based fiber sensor and comparing the minimum detectable strain value of the proposed scheme with that of a conventional sensing scheme. Experimental results demonstrate minimum detectable strain improvement by a factor of 3.93. This new SM sensing scheme allows for the detection of perturbations originally too weak to be detected by a given intensity-based fiber sensor, which will be beneficial for a variety of applications such as high frequency ultra-sound detection.